Trust Your Partner
by Grezex29
Summary: A week and a half after getting out of The Reaper's game, Neku takes time to reflect over one of the biggest mistakes he almost made, finding that sometimes the hardest person to forgive, is yourself. NekuxShiki is strongly implied/suggested. Please R&R.


Trust Your Partner

by: Grezex29

(I decided to make this after going through some of the chapters and collecting Secret Reports. I got to wondering why the events at the end of Week 1, Day 2 weren't mentioned all that much afterwards. This is simply my take on what I feel might be appropriate and there might be spoilers obviously since it's set post-game. I only have about 2/3 of the Secret reports, so if any mention of things from there is inaccurate, my apologies. And yes, I admit the beginning is similar to "Consequences" by silverfae, but it's purely coincidental and any thing that might be seen as a rip off of it wasn't intended.)

_"Neku...Don't kill me..."_

_"I have to."_

_Hand raised menacingly towards her, eyes lowered, and a blank look on his face, Neku Sakuraba could almost feel time slow down as the white-ish blue orbs of energy began to swirl from his fingertips. The encouragement from the female Reaper behind him barely registered as more than background noise and Shiki's desperate attempts at pleading didn't even begin to reach his ears. All that mattered, all that he was focused on was that she had to die. If she didn't, then he would, and Neku was certainly in no mood to be feeling like letting the Reaper erase him any time soon. He looked up towards her, his face still devoid of any and all feeling, and sharpened his focus, holding her in place as he began to slowly choke the life from her body._

_Her eyes were filled with fear, more fear than he had ever seen a human being show before. For a brief moment he almost felt guilty about the choice he had made, almost like he wished one of them didn't have to die. However, the feeling quickly passed as the teenager reassured himself that Shiki had gotten herself into this situation by being a spy for the Reapers and that she was the only one to blame for it. If it wasn't her, then it would've been him, and as time slowly crept on by, he kept telling himself that. His concentration deepened as he prepared to finish her once at for all._

_And then..._

...Neku snapped awake on his bed, realizing that he'd fallen asleep briefly. His headphones were resting comfortably around his neck, as that seemed to be their new home of sorts. It had been over a week and a half since he had last played the Reaper's Game, and yet he still couldn't get the memory out of his head.

Ever since that day, there had been the realization of the mistake he'd made and what he'd come so very close to doing, commit murder. There was nothing he could do to change it, nothing he could do to make it so that it had never happened, so that it would just go away and all would be well. He wished more than ever that he could simply erase the whole thing like so much Noise.

Try as he might though, the guilt he felt refused to leave him, and he could feel it tightening his stomach, making him feel more and more regretful about it as the seconds ticked by. When things had become tough, when he had gotten scared and desperate, he tried to take the easy way out. He'd suspected Shiki, he felt she was against him for reasons that were completely unjustifiable. Most importantly though, by refusing to believe her when she had told him the truth, Neku had gone against the most important rule, as had pointed out to him.

Trust your partner.

When she needed him to trust her more than anything, when she had asked for his help, he wouldn't listen. Never before had he seen the true nature of his previous behaviour as it really was. It wasn't independence, it wasn't being able to have the ability to live life for himself, not at all. The harsh reality is that it was cowardice, complete and utter cowardice through and through, and the sheer thought of it made him sick.

Was he really going to do it? Would he have really erased the very person who now meant everything to him?

**"No, I couldn't have, no way..." **

Despite his attempts to try and convince himself that he would have never actually gone through with such an act, the thoughts of doubt remained. All he could really do to reassure himself was to keep thinking that he was so much different now than he was then. That he had changed so much in such a short time that if he was placed in the same situation again, he would never even consider doing such a thing.

Shiki meant too much to him now to end her life in an attempt to save himself. It was easy to just walk the crowded streets of Shibuya and not look a single person in the eye, to shut each and every single one of them out entirely without letting them into your world or letting yourself into theirs. Behaviour like that was the introverted and "easy" way out, and Neku was done doing that. Still though, there were times when he wanted nothing more than to just be able to shut everything out of his mind and forget all that had happened. Better still, he often wished that parts of it had never happened; whether it was seeing Rhyme get erased, the unfortunate fates of Sota and Nao, or what had nearly happened to Shiki.

_'What if Mr.H hadn't stepped in?'_ he wonders to himself as the very thought of it almost starts to change the colour of his face out of nothing but the feeling that maybe, just maybe he didn't want to know the answer to that question. Surely, he would've been able to stop himself, right? When he told her that she had to die, certainly that was nothing more than him being scared and unsure of what to do? Lots of people say and think about doing things that they would never do, and that had to be nothing more than him experiencing that...

...didn't it?

Either way, he couldn't change things. He couldn't change the past, and he couldn't change what he had done, and he felt like there was no way he could justify or correct it.

Neku clenched his fist and bit his lip, knowing that regardless of how well things might go, there would always be the reality of what happened hanging overhead. It may as well have been a black cloud that was looming in the back of his mind due to how he felt about it. Try as he might, wish as he would, he could never change the past, what he'd done to the person he now held dear, and he had absolutely no idea what on earth the future was going to hold for him.

It was at that moment that a light switch went off in his head, and a whole different thought process began to enter his brain. He wondered if the best way for him to make amends for the past was to focus on the future. Perhaps if he showed Shiki how important to him she really was, and kept showing that he wasn't the same Neku he used to be, then hopefully that could make things right. Maybe he could forgive himself for it even, and maybe, just maybe, she would be able to forgive him as well.

_'I'm sick of this'_, the teen thought to himself as he realized he was starting to go completely full circle to how he was before he even started to think. Every time he began making headway to freeing himself from the guilt of what happened, he could feel his old habits tugging back at him. Still, Neku knew that he could break free of his chains, and no matter how uncomfortable it had made him in the past, he knew full well he'd been through infinitely worse.

He reached for his phone and flipped it open, pausing briefly before he started dialing the number. Neku knew exactly what he had to do now, and he wasn't about to waste any time in doing it. As the call went through, and he received an answer from the other end, he couldn't help but think again of what Mr.H had told him.

**"Shiki? It's me."** While Neku waited for her answer and prepared to finally make things right, and put things behind him, he couldn't help but smile a little bit.

They say, "trust your partner"...

...And he did.

-end


End file.
